One thing not mentioned, BTRFS supports transparent compression which hypothetically can increase the longevity of SSD media by reducing the amount of writes to the drive.

I say hypothetically because further information on use case (potential write amplification from CoW) could nullify those gains — but frankly, SSD write longevity has improved so much that it is not a huge issue at this point.

That makes a lot more sense! I’m sad now though I thought this was some cool homebrew-ery going on since the GameCube is just a power pc computer (I’ve seen people run Linux on the hardware before).

For FreeMC Boot, would you put it on a secondary OEM Card? Or is it best to just use one card for everything.

Sadly I don’t live in Europe, and the chain game stores here don’t sell them anymore. But there is lots of local places here that have good return policies / testing of everything before putting it on shelves.

Thank you very much for your insight!

Do you have experience with the MemCard PRO? Would you say it’s a full replacement for older memory cards, or should it be used in tandem with an original memory card in slot two.

If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly is the use of a floppy drive on a game cube?

3d printing an IO shield is a great idea! Retro console modding is a great use of a 3d printer.

I will second the suggestion for a dash camera, they can record audio automatically without need for user intervention.

Another option is to just use a voice assistant, I usually quickly ask my watch to start a voice recording beforehand to ensure there is a record of the interaction.

One of the advantages of Relay is that it is agnostic of your email provider, making it easier to switch providers without having to change the email on every account that has an alias.

Considering this, I’d be tempted to go with Addy.io instead of ProtonMail / SimpleLogin (subsidiary of Proton AG).

If you’re concerned with having to trust a third-party to process your emails however, Proton may be the better option with built-in aliasing. Mailbox.org is another option recommended by privacy guides with built-in aliasing.

If you’re concerned with Mozilla’s TOS change however, you may also be concerned with the Proton CEO implicitly supporting the current Trump presidency, believing that the Republicans will do a better job reigning big tech in (While I’ll agree that the democrats are not anti-corp, that died with Bernie, I think it’s foolish to believe the republicans will be better). They also pulled their entire media presence on Mastodon, and recently integrated Zoom despite explicitly stating that it has privacy issues in their blog.

I think some people are being a bit extreme in their characterization of Proton AG right now, but it definitely feels like they’re making some peculiar choices when looking at their guiding mission of privacy / security.

I feel like the major one for me (that hasn’t been listed) is Ape Escape. Growing up i played the (arguably worse) remaster of it for the PSP. Genuinely interesting to play a platformer so different yet so clearly reactionary to Mario 64. And it’s also just interesting how they handle the analog sticks in terms of controls

Like many games of the era the controls are frankly janky, but they are just so much fun

I might make the plunge soon as my desktop is just slightly too old—but, at the same time, I need Windows for a few things for work so it’s a little frustrating 🫠

Gaming wise I’m completely able to use Linux, but I also don’t really play competitive games with anti-cheat so it is not exactly surprising.

Do you have a separate computer that you can use to do a “test run” of using Linux? If not, I would at least play around with Linux in a virtual machine before committing to the bit (and I say this as someone who has been using Linux laptop / Windows desktop for 6-7 ish years now)

Some older consoles have very negligible size libraries in modern day terms, and who knows what sources of ROMs will be taken down by lawsuits in the next few decades. I feel like there is some sense in making a complete archive of a systems game library, but for my personal use I usually just download / dump / rip what I need specifically.

Whatever file format I use them in is also how I back them up, I backup my entire desktop’s and laptop’s data to an external hard drive and an online service provider. I’m sure a compressed format would be more space efficient but that would take much more time given my use case.

In the case of my laptop it runs Linux and the filesystem I use supports “transparent compression” (almost all contents of the drive are compressed with zstd), so I’m guessing any of the ROMs on there will have already been compressed as nuch as they can (but I’m not knowledgeable enough on the file format specs)

Assuming the NAT type is one that supports peer to peer connectivity, you could try using Ethernet instead of wireless (of course this only helps when docked). This would alleviate issues with WiFi signal not being strong enough, potentially increase bandwidth, and reduce latency. Ethernet can’t improve the connection beyond the incoming connection from the ISP, it only will improve issues that stem from wireless connectivity.

I live in the countryside with my family, so maybe that’s why my Internet is so wonky?

it could very well be this, when I visit my parents in the countryside the internet is sometimes not good enough, and other times it is adequate (satellite internet, so weather can impact it).